Akademie Schönbühl, BGE and LdL in the Press

Since this week I am the partner of a private limited company: the Akademie Schönbühl, an enterprise for advanced training and further education. I’m working together with Alfred Weinberger, who has already established an interesting program of courses and who has a high reputation reaching institutions not only in southern Germany, but also in Austria and Switzerland. At the Akademie Schönbühl, I will try to establish a new competence center for languages and communication.

Due to this new cooperation, I was interviewed by Michael Lehner, journalist working for the Schwäbische Zeitung. He understood the idea of BGE and LdL very fast and made suggestions for the further development and spread of BGE and LdL. He has tried to condense all the information he collected during the 90-min interview in this article, which appeared today.

Joachim Grzega

Dealing with Heterogeneous Learner Groups

Jean-Pol Martin has recently told me that he is currently teaching a very heterogeneous group. In my view, one of the most central problems to solve in classes at German schools and universities is differentiation. How do you manage that everyone will leave a lesson saying “I’ve learned something new that will help me.” For my BGE primary school course I developed materials that will allow learners to decide themselves whether they want to learn by themselves or in pairs, whether they want to deal with the language actively or passively, whether they want to deal with simple or more sophisticated tasks. At university, I try to meet differentiation by having the students choose topics for their seminar papers themselves (according to their interests and needs). This can be a simple or a complex task (my task will be to find out together with the student if the task can be completed in a reasonable span of time). Nevertheless, when presenting the topic in class, everyone has to make this topic as interesting as possible for the others. LdL at its pure form. And this is also what JPM has experienced as effective.

Sometimes, though, the course contents are neatly defined by official regulations. Here, I have to find a way that everybody reaches the minimum level required in an effective and very efficient way, and I have to see that those who acquire the level earlier can advance even further. One of the things that I use is to present students two baskets of exercises—easier ones and more difficult ones. This way all everyone can decide for himself or herself from which level s/he wants to draw a slip of paper (with an exercise) be tested. Even the simple exercises, however, will seek that the learner (and everyone else in class) can check how well s/he has acquired the minimum level.

Joachim Grzega

Guest lecture on eurolinguistics in Innsbruck

Last week I was at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). I had been invited by Professor Wolfgang Pöckl for a guest lecture. Originally, all students wanted to buy my “EuroLinguistischer Parcours”, but unfortunately the publishing house is sold, because the owner has fallen seriously sick, and there were not enough book copies left. I’m currently looking for another publisher for a second edition of the book and hopefully also for an English edition. The students had been given a copy of a few chapters of the book and my talk was now to supplement the reading.

I was glad to hear that Professor Pöckl wanted a rather programmatic lecture. So the title that we both decided on was: “Goals and Ways of Applied Eurolinguistics in a Globalized World”.

After summarizing the basic competences for knowledge societies that we could deduce from best-selling books on socioeconomic history and development, I presented my ideas of how we should/could teach eurolinguistics and what kind of research questions we should/could focus on. Of course, I also introduced LdL, BGE and two of my student projects (at the moment, the outline of my presentation together with the links I used is still available on my Wikiversity site). I also tried to activate the students using questionnaires and inserting brief discussions; their professor afterwards told me that he was surprised how much the (normally shy) students actually participated in the brief discussions. Another professor told me immediately after my talk that her students said that they were inspired by the ideas presented and that they would like to talk about them in the following seminar session. Both professors told me that their students—all future interpreters and translators—normally ask for practical exercises in interpreting and translating and dislike too much “academic research”; but due to my talk, they said, students could see that doing research, if in some way connected to practical problems, is something that students should try out in present-day society and that it is something that can be fun. As a matter of fact, when I came back to my office in Eichstätt, there was already a mail by a student who wanted to add me to her network on xing.de and to exchange ideas on a thesis she is working on.

Joachim Grzega

New JPM videos on YouTube

There are two new YouTube videos on Jean-Pol Martin’s anthropological model with JPM himself:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Joachim Grzega

Lecture with David Crystal

Last Thursday I attended a lecture given by the renowned and respected linguist David Crystal. The audience was thrilled by his very entertaining, or rather: edutaining, speech. This gives me courage to continue developping ideas for “linguistic edutainment” — also for an expert audience.

Moreover, David Crystal also called for a new kind of Historical English Linguistics, namely Applied Historical English Linguistics. He talked about how he taught Shakespearean pronunciation to a theater group. This is something that I was already asked for a few years ago (however, not for the performance of an entire drama, but for the performance of 2 Shakespearean sonnets). Apart from that, there is more that can be understood under Applied Historical English Linguistics – e.g. teaching knowledge of historical linguistics that teachers need to answer frequent learner questions. This is something I’ve been teaching as a course for several years. The course is also on the English Wikiversity since 2007:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Applied_historical_English_linguistics

Joachim Grzega

Farewell to Marion Schöner

Today is Marion Schöner’s last day at Eichstätt University. I would like to express my gratitude for her multi-faceted support over the past years. Since 2004 she has supported me in my research and teaching as a colleague, an assistant and as a friend. She has adopted and promoted Lernen durch Lehren as a didactic model, she has committed herself as a co-editor to my journals Onomasiology Online and Journal for EuroLinguistiX and she has helped me in the Basic Global English projects. She will now start her teacher traineeship at a German Gymnasium (high-school). Although she will try to continue assisting me in my projects, this new stage in her life also means a tough change in my life. I wish her all the best.

Joachim Grzega

Developing the ideas of an A1-seminar and Euro-polyglot

I am thinking about creating a special “Euro-polyglot” certificate, or diploma. A person would be called Euro-polyglot if s/he commands at least the following language levels:

+ native language

+ Global English

+ A1-level in 5 languages

= Euro-polyglot

For the specific A1 seminar, we should first recall the definition of A1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference: “Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.”

I thought that the 5 languages should be:

1. German (or Dutch, if German is the mother tongue)
2. French (or Spanish, if French is the mother tongue)
3. Italian (or Spanish, if Italian is the mother tongue)
4. Slovak (or Slovene, if Slovak is the mother tongue)
5. Hungarian (or Spanish, if Hungarian is the mother tongue)

They may be taught in the following order: Hungarian (clearly agglutinating + easy spelling-pronunciation relations) – Italian (clearly isolating in noun phrases & clearly inflecting in verb phrases + easy sp-pron + loans!) – Spanish (clearly isolating in noun phrases & not so easy verb inflections + easy sp-pron) – Slovak (clear inflections + easy sp.-pron.) – Slovene (difficult, but clear inflections + easy sp.-pron.) – Dutch (clearly isolating in noun phrase & verb inflections + not so easy sp.-pron.) – German (difficult, but clear inflections + easy sp.-pron. + loans!) – French (clearly isolating in noun phrases + difficult inflections + difficult sp-pron relationships + loans!)

At present, my aim would be to teach these 5 languages in 42 hours:

• Transcultural Competence: 2 hours
• Lg 1: 6 hours
• Lg 2: 6 hours
• Lg 3: 6 hours
• Lg 4: 6 hours
• Lg 5: 6 hours
• Revisions: 4 hours
• Transcultural Competence: 2 hours
• Test: 2 hours

= 42 hours

Joachim Grzega

Academic Feedback on My Work

A Spanish journal wants to translate (or an adapted Spanish version) of my article on Wikipedia.

Jean-Pol Martin and I have been asked to write an article on LdL for a French journal.

JG

A1 polyglot

I’m also thinking abouts way to apply some of the fundamental aspects of BGE to other European languages. The concept that I have in mind is to allow people to acquire basic competences in several European languages in the shortest time possible (project “A1 polyglot”, or, “A1 euro-polyglot”, with A1 referring to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).

BGE centerstage

Just 2 hours ago, I finished a lecture with discussion on BGE at a student club. The overall title of my presentation was “On the European Year of Intercultural Dialog”. Very interesting discussion.

In a few hours I will lead a BGE lesson with my kids at elementary school again. Another reporter from the Bayerischer Rundfunk will visit us.

People’s interest in, and our work on, materials for self-educated BGE also continues. The material shall consist of
1. an English book as the necessary and sufficient basis
2. a book with the metalinguistic explanations of the basic book in various the learner’s language, an audio CD and an exercise CD-Rom as “luxury equipments”.